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Better than WiFi: Ethernet over power
(8/10)
Yip, you read that correctly. Ethernet over power, not power over Ethernet.
For years I’ve been having performance and coverage issues with WiFi at home. Most of the kit I have is pretty good quality stuff (Apple and Netgear mostly), but for applications like streaming video I just never seemed to be able to just turn my devices on and then sit back and relax. I always had to fiddle with something here or reconfigure something there. Eventually I just got sick of it and either gave up or ran a length of CAT-5 to temporarily solve the problem. Not pretty but it got the job done most of the time. I yearned for a sexier long term solution and no matter what I did, WiFi just didn’t cut it.
I then stumbled upon “powerline” technology, pretty much by accident, and thought that it sounded too good to be true. After reading a number of online reviews I picked myself a pair of these Netgear Powerline HD babies:
From the front.
From the side.
Essentially you plug these units directly into a power outlet. One near where you want tp get from, the other where you want to get to. The devices then connect to each other over your homes existing power cabling delivering a cool 108Mbps (with QoS if you choose).
No more need to run that CAT-5 between two impossible parts of your home. The electrician that originally wired up your house already did all the hard work.
These devices have been livesavers for me and you can run up to 12 in the same home.
Clean. Easy. Reliable. Just the way I like it.
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Gordon on September 14, 2009 at 22:47, and is filed under Reviews. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 2 years ago
Awesome – I am really interested in getting some of these for my house as well. I have a downstairs xbox that I want to connect to Windows Home Server, but Microsoft charges a R1300 for the xbox wireless adaptor in SA. How much are these little guys and where did you buy them?
about 2 years ago
I actually used them for connecting my 360 for a while as well. Works really well. Using it to stream HD media throughout the house now.
I originally bought them from Lightedge Technolgies, but they went bang some time ago. Duxbury are the local distributors for all Netgear stuff, so I suggest giving them a call and asking them to recommend a retailer near you.
You get your first two as a “kit” for about R1500 and then you can buy additional units for about R800. Not sure on the current price. The HD units allow for up to 12 units in your house, which should be plenty. I generally connect a small 8 port Netgear Gigabit Ethernet switch to each powerline unit so that I can connect multiple devices.
about 1 year ago
My programmer is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using Movable-type on several websites for about a year and am nervous about switching to another platform. I have heard great things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress posts into it? Any kind of help would be really appreciated!